What's your contingency plan?

If you're going to take THAT attitude with anyone who's not in journalism, then what is Moddy doing here? He's not a journalist.

What about the numbers of former journos here? If I leave the business, should I also leave my SportsJournalists.com membership behind?

The last thing we should be doing is running off someone who has an obvious interest in seeing the profession buck the trends and survive. Whether that person's a journalist or not shouldn't be the issue ESPECIALLY if they used to be journalists.

 

But, I DO understand the absurdity of those people's minds. Maybe not to the extent that they were bitching about MY coverage of an event, or my personal reporting of a story. But I handled the majority of all complaint calls that came into the newsroom. Trust me, I am familiar with the idiot complaints.

My point was, while these people are a huge pain the ass to deal with and they have the ability ro ruin a good day, I truly don't feel that they represent the majority of the readership.

I'll shut up now.

 

Contingency plan? Fuck, I knew I was forgetting something!

 

If any college intern or high schooler asks me about the job, I'm telling them to avoid it. In fact, I'm yelling it from the hills. I'm not steering talented people into this field. No way. There will not be blood on these hands.

 

I don't understand why anyone save for designers, agate clerks, classified ad personnel and pressroom workers would really have angst about newspapers becoming Internet products. Still need reporters, copy editors, supervisors. The cuts are coming because papers are in a transition period. If they had a way to make money on the Net and a way to slow content stealing, they'd have melted down the presses by now. So they have to keep the print product going, at too high a profit margin, to be sure, but with lower revenues.

 

There might be a designer or two on this site, dools.

 

As I think about it more, I really am wondering if it's time to totally redo the business model (DUH). I think the answer may be in the word free.

I know everyone cringes at the word free, but I think to make the print product excel again, giving it away may be the answer in some spots. I lived in a small but growing town and in the early 1990s there was one guy who decided to start up a newspaper here. Was a weekly at first, then a bi-weekly. And it was free. Stocked in the local retail stores. Then a local chain that specailizes in small town papers bought it for a nice size sum. The main thing they changed was outting a 25 cent price tag on it. 25 cents! It was dead in less than a year. And this company has several successful newspapers.

The guy that started the initial paper started up a new one last year. It's doing fine again. Still free.

Give something away and you are reaching a larger market. Most of the biz peepes know that the majority of the revenue is the ads, not copy sales. So why bother keeping it especially if the subcribers are canceling in droves anyway? You reach the larger market, you can increase ad sales and prices.
You'll still have plenty who want to keep the home subscription, and a small fee can be worked out there.
I don't know that it's that simple, but it may well be the answer. Who knows.

 

Yeah, well, people are getting and enjoying the product for free on the Internet and that isn't exactly paying off.

 

but the "transition" has lasted too long. and there is no reason to assume that it will ever end because no one can invent the magic bullet to make the online versions as profitable as print used to be.

 

So, when all newspapers are shut down, people are just going to learn to deal without their sports news? I don't believe that.

There IS a demand for it. And if there's a demand for something, there's got to be a way to make money on it.

 

I don't understand why, in addition to a web page(s), every single newspaper does not have an actual E-edition, where ads can be treated, layout-wise, just like the print product, and where other design elements/tailoring could, possibly, also be implemented specifically because the papers are being done electronically.